Spontaneous visit to Frankfurt

Writing about visiting Frankfurt was definitely something I wouldn’t have predicted for myself! But due to Grégory’s work obligations sending him to Frankfurt on a Friday, we figured why not stay until Sunday and explore the city. In the end, it made for an unexpected trip full of lovely surprises. In short, I spent all of Friday walking through the city on my own, while Saturday was reserved for Mainz and Sunday we were back in Frankfurt for our train. We opted to sleep over in another town and therefore explore two different cities in one weekend.

To start off, my Friday was spent exploring Frankfurt and doing all the photographing so as to bother Grégory less on Sunday. I left the center of the city for the end and crossed the river to walk through some residential streets. I was trying to tick off as many places off my list after which I sat down at oheim for some refreshments. Soon after I headed towards the old part of the town.

The thing about Frankfurt is that at first, all you see are skyscrapers and modern architecture. So the reason why I never saw myself visiting it was because I didn’t know about all the timber-framed houses and German renaissance architecture hiding in the old town. Before our trip, looking up Frankfurt on other blogs only lead me to short city visits in between layovers and such. You won’t make a mistake by visiting the city center. It might be filled with people, which I found surprising for February but it’s certainly worth it.

I have to admit I overdid it with walking that Friday. I don’t have one of those apps that track such things but I know it was too much because I felt so weak and out of energy by 3 pm already! So after visiting the cathedral and photographing some other places, I sat down to warm up with tea at Teehaus Ronnefeldt. Honestly, it took me a while to find a place that serves something other than coffee, Frankfurt is obsessed with it. Anyhow, soon after I was finally joined by Grégory and we headed to Mainz.

You can read all about Mainz here so I’ll skip right on over to Sunday in Frankfurt. We checked out of our Airbnb and took the train to Frankfurt, which is only 30 minutes away. Technically, that morning Grégory saw Frankfurt for the first time and his first introduction to it was a coffee place, naturally. We walked around quite a lot, ticking off what was left on the list and ending up at the city center.

The only place I had ever pinned on Google maps in all of Frankfurt was, in fact, the Goethe House. We paid it a visit that Sunday once the weather turned and it started pouring outside. Needless to say, I found the creaky old house to be utterly charming. His personal library was the most enchanting place of all and I wished I could’ve spent more time in it! What followed after was lunch at Goć Phố, a Vietnamese restaurant, which was a rather unusual choice for us but we felt like trying something new.

By then the rain had started pouring even more so we just headed to the train station an hour ahead of our train. By the time we boarded it, we were soaking wet but it was nice to know that we were only a few hours away from home. All in all, it was a trip that pleasantly surprised us since we didn’t have high expectations. Exploring both cities was a lot of fun and I recommend you to do the same if you’re able to!